Flight 370: The truth is out there, way out there

The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, as of this writing, remains a mystery, fueling great debate and speculation about its whereabouts or what might have happened to it, mostly on cable news outlets that have reported extensively on something that nobody seems to know much of anything about.

Which hasn’t stopped them in the past.

The Boeing 777 has simply disappeared, vanished without a trace as if it had entered the Witness Protection Program and was living under an alias in Arizona.

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That kind of thing just doesn’t happen, or so we’ve been led to believe. We are so used to the entire globe being under constant surveillance that it’s hard to understand how something as big as an airliner could simply vanish without some clue as to its whereabouts. Radar, satellites, anything, it should have shown up somewhere.

But it hasn’t, leading to great speculation.

There are still those who believe that somehow terrorists are involved — you know, those experts who apparently make a living by appearing on cable news and declaring that anything could be pinned on terrorists. As time has passed, it seems unlikely. For one thing, terrorists usually take credit for their acts. How else can they make what they believe their point is? Their point is typically indecipherable, but at least they take credit. For another thing, there’s no evidence supporting the terrorist theory, which, come to think of it, hasn’t had any bearing on what the experts speculate about in the past.

On the other hand, there was the theory, floated early this week, that, perhaps, one of the pilots had something to do with the plane’s disappearance, the evidence consisting of him not liking the Malaysian government and saying “good night” over the radio minutes before the airliner dropped from sight.

Then, there are the more outlandish theories, fueled by what some experts are calling “disinformation” being released by the Malaysian government.

On CNN, anchor Don Lemon, noting that the plane disappeared on a Sunday, said, “We go to church, the supernatural power of God…people are saying to me, why aren’t you talking about the possibility — and I’m just putting it out there — that something odd happened to this plane, something beyond our understanding?”

God made it happen?

Or maybe TV producers.

There have been some fans of the TV show “Lost” who have taken to the Interwebs to compare what happened to Flight 370 to the show. In that show, an airliner crashed on a desert island, or kind of, leading to some other things happening and whatnot before it was revealed that all of the people on the airliner went on to be on other TV shows. (The fat guy, I think, wound up in Hawaii.)

And that would hold water if the airliner had been occupied by actors, which it wasn’t.

So there’s that.

Other theories included:

• The string theory theory. In this one, it is believed that the airliner flew through a tear in the time-space continuum and wound up in an alternate universe parallel to this one where everything is exactly the same, except for a few details. For instance, in a parallel universe, there are people who believe the United States is ruled by a dictator who is the worse monster in the history of humankind. OK, maybe that’s a bad example. Perhaps in this parallel universe, doughnuts make you skinny, cats and dogs live in harmony and Nickelback doesn’t suck.

• The cell phone theory. You know when you get on an airliner, they tell you to turn off all electronic devices during take off? Maybe someone didn’t and this is what happens — the jet disappears.

• The alien theory. Aliens — from space, not Mexico or something — swooped down and jetnapped the airliner and, as we speak, are examining the passengers by probing them in places best left unprobed. (It’s always been a mystery to me that beings that had mastered intersteller, faster-than-light-speed flight would come to Earth with the intent to perform colonoscopies on the planet’s inhabitants.)

• “The Twilight Zone” theory. This one, which I made up, has the airliner landing in Germany in 1936, and the passengers somehow blow their chance to kill Hitler.

All of those are as valid anything, which is to say, not at all.

But one theory, set forth on the website Atlas Obscura, is kind of grounded in reality.

It starts with a Reuters story that suggested that the plane deliberately flew off course and headed toward the Andaman Islands, an archipelago west of Malaysia in — what else? — the Andaman Sea. One of the islands, North Sentinel, is occupied by a tribe called the Sentinelese, called that because any attempt to find out what they call themselves has ended badly.

The Sentinelese, according to reports, still apparently believe it’s the Paleolithic Era. They are often described as Stone-Age hunter-gathers who have remained untouched by civilization since, well, the beginning of time.

There have been attempts to study them. For almost 30 years, the website reported, Indian anthropologists tried to make contact with them, boating to the shoreline and trying to coax them out with gifts of coconuts, machetes, candy and — seriously — a pig. The response was always the same — the Sentinelese threw rocks and shot arrows and screamed at the visitors — a clear indication that they simply wanted to be left alone.

The Indian government gave up trying to contact them in 1997, and nothing was heard from them until 2006, when a fishing boat ventured too close to the island and the Sentinenese opened fire with bows and arrows. Two fishermen were killed in the encounter. Attempts to recover the fishermen’s bodies by helicopter were thwarted when the natives pelted the chopper with arrows and rocks.

Atlas Obscura reported: “The possible presence of Flight 370 in the vicinity of North Sentinel makes for prime conspiracy fodder. (Where’s the perfect place to park a plane so no-one will find it? On an island where people are still living in the Stone Age!) It’s a ridiculous notion, certainly, but no more ridiculous than some of the speculation already running rampant.”

And it does seem unlikely that a tribe still living in the Stone Age would have a landing strip able to handle a Boeing 777.

Yeah, but weirder things have been speculated.

Mike Argento can be reached at mike@ydr.com or (570) 771-2046. Read more Argento columns at www.ydr.com/mike. Or follow him on Twitter at @FnMikeArgento